


True Colors

by ishie



Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: 2010, 5000-10000 Words, Community: trekreversebang, F/M, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-05
Updated: 2010-06-05
Packaged: 2017-10-09 22:47:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/92431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ishie/pseuds/ishie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the dim light of the bar, the subtly graduated layers of the Cardassian sunrise were indistinguishable from one another.</p>
            </blockquote>





	True Colors

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Elektra_lyte's [fanart](http://elektra-lyte.livejournal.com/66712.html) for the 2010 [Trek Reverse Bang](http://trekreversebang.livejournal.com). Set a few weeks after Star Trek XI. This is my first stab at the reboot (or TOS) characters and it was completely freaking me out. I would LOVE any feedback and concrit you want to offer.
> 
> Thanks to The_wanlorn and Inkdot for being the best damn cheerleaders and betas of all time. OF ALL TIME.

In the dim light of the bar, the subtly graduated layers of the Cardassian sunrise were indistinguishable from one another. Uhura grimaced at the slushy hiss the drink made when she upended it. She'd had enough: of the music, of the dozen barely modulated conversations that washed over her from every direction. Of the grasping, queasy feeling that overtook her with every glimpse of a halfway familiar profile, only to have it turned more fully toward her and revealed to be a stranger.

She sat the glass back down on the smooth transparent bar, careful to center it precisely on the pattern of interlocking condensation rings she'd built over the course of the evening. The bartender caught the movement and came forward to sweep the now-empty glass toward him. His white shirt glowed in the faint bluish light, a perfect counterpoint to his honeyed voice — one that most cadets agreed was reason enough to make the trek all the way off-campus.

Uhura started to wave him off, ready to tell him that she was ready to settle her account, when a faint blast of cool deep green brushed past her ear.

"Well, well, fancy meeting you here, Lieutenant."

McCoy's face slowly swam into focus when she tilted her head back and smiled up at him. Her ponytail rasped against the back of her shirt. "Doctor McCoy! I thought you were meeting with the—"

But her words trailed off into nothing, something that was happening with an alarming frequency since...

Since. Just _since_.

"Had enough of sitting around with those long-winded egomaniacal buffoons," McCoy huffed, snapping her attention back with the tiniest thread of burnt orange frustration. "You heading out? Or do you think you'd be up to keeping me company until one of us face-plants over in the corner?"

His hand was warm and solid around the sharp joint at her shoulder for a moment, and then he was flagging down the bartender. Uhura didn't stop herself from leaning into the length of his chest for just a moment before slipping off her stool. The cool green of his voice wrapped around her as he ordered his drink and another refill of hers, while the familiar bright sparks of his irritation and concern pushed back against the overwhelming riot of colors and sounds swirling around the bar.

They settled into a dark booth at the back, both sliding to the ends of their respective benches to keep their backs against solid wood. McCoy's eyes met hers for an instant over the rim of his whiskey glass, then slid away to take in the rest of the room.

Uhura toyed with her drink, trying not to grit her teeth at the silvery rasp of ice against glass.

"If you don't want it, I doubt scowling at it's the way to get it to go away." He waited for a beat, then set down his drink with a sharp, dry click of his tongue when she didn't take the opening.

"You still haven't talked to anyone, have you?"

She tried to stall, aware even as she did that they would both hear the lie in her voice, a sickly green-grey like citrus left to rot in a dark, dank cupboard.

"I haven't had the time," she said at last.

The booth creaked as he relaxed against the high back, crossing his arms over his chest in the posture she usually associated with his futile attempts at reining Kirk in.

Hunching her shoulders forward tugged at the knot of tension that had taken up residence at the nape of her neck and wouldn't let go. She'd gone to the mandatory session with the assigned trauma counselor, a spindly Denebian with a voice like blood who explained that she'd been pressed into service despite a lack of field experience as a therapist. The counselor nodded at Uhura's too-smooth words as though she weren't interested in delving any deeper and authorized her return to active duty effective immediately.

Uhura knew she needed to find someone else, to finally let out the ball of grief and fear that had lodged itself deep in her chest. But she was afraid that if she did, she'd never get the wounds closed again. She didn't have time to coddle herself. There was so much to do: rebuilding the fleet, piecing together the details of what had happened into a narrative that would placate the Council members baying for explanations, supporting the Vulcans — and Spock.

McCoy was still waiting for her, his blue eyes locked on her face as though he could read the thoughts in her head.

She mirrored his pose, crossed arms and all. "Between the debriefings and trying to cobble the logs together into some sort of order— I just haven't had the time."

Her voice was brittle and sharp, and so was the sigh of relief that escaped when McCoy shook his head and changed the subject. They weren't to report to _Enterprise_ for duty for another week or two, but he was still the CMO. He could order her to stand down at any time if he thought she was endangering herself or her performance by not dealing with the aftermath.

But he didn't. Instead, he waved over the bartender for another round, and cool condensation from her fresh drink gathered on her fingertips while McCoy recounted his latest altercation with the senior nurse he'd hand-picked for his new medical team. He had been putting the whole team through its paces at the med center, and every time she had seen him in the last few weeks, he'd had another story about how the woman was making his life hell.

"—narrow-minded, pig-headed, completely impossible _hellcat_. I can't do a damn thing right, according to her highness, and—"

Uhura didn't have to listen carefully to hear the flicker of attraction riding underneath the spiky yellows and oranges. She hid a smile in the cloying sweetness of her drink then wiped it away with the sticky traces of liqueur left on her upper lip. Eyes wide (and innocent, she hoped), she asked, "I take it then that you found your replacement for Kirk?"

McCoy growled and swiped at the hair starting to escape from its carefully combed style to drift down over his forehead. "Don't you start with me," he warned. "If I needed someone mouthing off to me, I wouldn't have signed on for this damned space navy in the first place. Could've just stayed right where I was."

He was quiet again for a while, turning his glass around and staring at the amber liquid as though it held answers to questions he wanted to ask. Finally, he shifted and smiled at her, a hint of an apology in the set of his shoulders. "You should know: no matter how hard you try, you're never going to beat my daughter in the smart-mouth derby."

The next morning, the shrill, piercing tones of the communicator in her bunk dragged Uhura out of an unpleasant dream. It was an automated message from Kirk — _Captain_ Kirk; she was having an extraordinary amount of trouble remembering to refer to him that way. The message was summoning the bridge officers to his TDY office for an ad hoc staff meeting — the first of many for the new, permanent crew.

After rummaging in vain for something that would cut through the throbbing in her head, she rushed into and out of the shower in three minutes flat. She threw on the first uniform she grabbed, a drab gray tunic and dull black pants, and was still scraping her hair back into some semblance of an appropriate style when she collided with Hannity in the doorway of Kirk's office.

"Oh, excuse me!" they exclaimed in unison. Hannity's nervous giggle scraped along Uhura's nerves and she followed the other woman into the conference area with her jaw clenched.

The shading on the windows was turned to the highest translucence, and the early morning sunlight sent stabbing pains through her eyes all the way to the back of her head. Uhura slid into the chair between Hannity and McCoy, who was already seated with his head hung forward and both hands covering his face. She could sympathize, but she wouldn't. It was his fault she was in the same position; if he hadn't insisted on her keeping him company, she would have gone home at a reasonable hour and with most of her faculties still working. Instead, she kept her back to the windows as much as possible and tried not to moan when the whistle Kirk insisted on — even when he was planetside — blared through the room to announce his entrance.

He bounced on the balls of his feet and shot a wide grin at the room at large. "That is still _so cool_."

Yeoman Rand started reading out the agenda, shooting tiny glances at Kirk every few seconds to make sure he was paying attention still. She'd been a remarkable help to him in the short amount of time since she'd been assigned, but they way her voice warmed several shades whenever she caught his eye made Uhura nervous. She'd heard that particular tonal change far more than she ever wanted to.

As the yeoman kept reading, Uhura concentrated on keeping kept her posture as rigid as possible, hoping to project her usual image of competence and attentiveness and not a mirror image of the miserable wretch sitting to her left. She hoped the meeting would be relatively short. All she wanted to do was punch up a hangover remedy on the nearest replicator and then crawl in bed to die.

"Bones!" Kirk bellowed, interrupting Yeoman Rand mid-sentence. McCoy and Uhura both recoiled; Uhura shifted to sit on her hand so she wouldn't raise it to clutch at her head.

The room lurched sideways across her vision when she tried to focus on the captain. He looked far too cheerful for such an early hour, practically beaming at McCoy next to her, who muttered something guttural and likely to be stricken from the log Rand was recording.

"Okay with you if we get started?" Kirk asked, not lowering his volume one whit. His voice was at least six shades brighter than normal and Uhura felt like her teeth would rattle right out of her skull. "You look like you might need a minute."

"Let's just get a damn move on already," McCoy yelled back, just as loud, looking like he regretted it the minute the words left his mouth.

Uhura didn't bother to hid her wince this time. She was busy concentrating on keeping the sudden rolling tide of nausea from pitching her out of her chair and onto the floor.

Kirk shrugged. "Not really anything to talk about. We just needed to test how quickly everyone could assemble once the call went out. Sulu, I'm impressed. I didn't think it was possible to get here from the training platform so fast." He nodded at Rand, who made a note on her PADD and left the room. Once the door had closed behind her, Kirk clapped and rubbed his hands together.

"So! I know we're all itching to get our hands on that _beauty_ of a ship, but Scotty's report this morning says it's going to be another three weeks before he'll even clear us to move into our quarters."

A rumbling groan swept over the room like a dark gray thunderhead, but it broke into sunny laughter when he added, "And apparently I should stop asking before he lets Keenser get his hands on the captain's chair."

He waited until the laughter died out before he spoke again. "The good news is..." He pitched his voice a little louder, pausing to smirk at the dirty glare McCoy shot at him. "I'm ordering all of you to get the hell out of town for the next eight days. You've been working damn hard and who knows when we'll get the chance again once we leave orbit."

When no one responded, he pulled out another of his wide toothy grins. "You're on furlough, folks. Make the most of it. Dismissed."

Uhura had almost made it out of the room when Kirk called her back. He waited until the room was empty, then slouched against one of the windows. "Have you talked to anybody yet?"

She bristled. "Sir, Commander Delonna cleared me for active duty almost six weeks ago. I brought you the clearance myself."

"Since then, I meant. It doesn't have to be anyone official. Family, friends...?"

"Did Dr McCoy ask you to speak to me, sir?"

"What? Bones? This morning was the first time I've seen him all week. This is me asking, Uhura: Jim. Not as your captain — well, maybe a little bit as your captain."

She couldn't take the concern that bled from his voice, thick red choking waves that filled the room and made her want to scream. "Are you ordering me to speak with a counselor, sir?" she asked, her voice growing stiffer and more incredulous with each word.

"No, _Lieutenant_, I'm not. But I will, if you don't get your head on straight by the time you report back here for duty."

He didn't bother to gauge her response, just turned to look out over the grounds with his hands clasped behind his back in a stance that was more familiar on Spock than on him. Uhura started to protest, to remind him of all the tasks she still had to complete before they began the long process of transferring operations onto the ship.

Kirk cut her off with a sharp, "That's all. You're dismissed." His voice had shifted all the way to the other end of the spectrum, cold and blue-white like Captain Pike's lips when they'd transported him back from the _Nerada_.

She nodded and spun on her heel, far past caring about the breach in protocol as she stormed out of the office. The righteous fury kept her going all the way back to her bunk, where she balled up her fists and paced back and forth across the narrow single room. Some distant corner of her mind that was still capable of rational thought recognized how over the top her reaction was and knew that McCoy and Kirk were right to be concerned. Her lack of concentration, the way she let the everyday waves of sound and color inundate her, how quickly her temper rose to the surface — even Cadet Kirk at his callous, conceited worst hadn't been able to get a rise out of her so quickly.

There was a faint rush of air from the bed when she sank down on it and reached for her communicator. They were right. She did need to talk to someone. She needed to have done it weeks ago, before the ball in her chest grew so large that it felt like it was pressing on every one of her limbs, cutting off her air and circulation. Slowly strangling her from the inside.

At first, she'd kept everything to herself, so wrapped up in putting one foot ahead of the other. In keeping her focus on what needed done in that moment and no further.

She had tried, once, to reach out to Spock. But the first brush of her hand against his temple had unleashed a torrent of his grief and anguish, loosening something in her own chest that grew daily. He'd pushed her away, with words that she couldn't make sense of, in a voice that burned fiery-red as he tried to bring himself under control once again. It grew brighter the farther he retreated from her, until she barely recognized the dark crimson timbre she'd fallen in love with.

Now, in her bunk, Uhura programmed the communicator and hit send.

Six hours later, the rough grass of her mother's garden tickled the soles of her bare feet.

\---

The sky above was blue and clear; the tall white and silver spires of Dar es Salaam shimmering in the heat far away to the south along the coast. A bowl of water sparkled over her knees as she swirled it, rinsing the grit from several handfuls of rice. The soft blues of her mother's voice drifted through the air to melt with the foamy white _shush_ of the waves against the sand at the shoreline.

M'Umbha turned another page, pausing in her reading aloud to peer across the garden to chide her daughter. "I wish you would put that down. There's a perfectly good replicator in the kitchen. It's not like we have to cook by hand."

It was an argument they'd had no less than a dozen dozen times, almost doubling that number just in the few days Uhura had been home. For all that she loved the everyday technologies that surrounded her in Starfleet and at her mother's ultra-modern home, there was something soothing about the simple swish of rice through the water and the heft of the sun-warmed metal bowl between her palms. As a young girl she had often sat on her grandmother's lap and helped her to prepare holiday meals, letting the older woman's warm, velvety purple voice roll through her back to vibrate in her ribs.

"I'm almost done," she called back, tipping the bowl at just the right angle to allow the excess water to sluice off into the grass at her feet.

Stepping into the cool dark of the kitchen was like passing through a doorway into another world. Where outside all was sun-bleached tropical splendor, sea grasses waving in the wind and dust rising from the old unpaved road that hugged the coastline, inside was a gleaming white series of rooms that wouldn't be out of place in the Academy barracks or private quarters aboard a starship.

Uhura thumbed on the cooktop that had been out of date when she was still a girl barely able to see the top of it. She wrinkled her nose as the flash of heat incinerated the thin layer of dust, and made quick work of transferring the rice and water to a thin hammered pot and set it on the back burner to cook slowly.

While the water heated, she busied herself at the short counter, chopping pungent onions and juicy tomatoes. Her mother followed soon after and toed off her sandals at the door before padding barefoot across the cool red tiles. She snatched a chunk of tomato from the bowl and ate it with audible pleasure, clearly not as opposed to the idea of an old-fashioned meal as she tried to let on. When Uhura pulled the jar of ghee from a cabinet overhead, M'Umbha tugged at the ends of her hair.

"You knew all along I bought fresh fish before you woke this morning, didn't you?"

Uhura shrugged, not bothering to hide the shaky smile that kept bubbling up out of nowhere as the calm of the house sank into her. Her mother hovered at her elbow while she finished preparing the curried fish, trying again and again to sneak bites when Uhura's attention was directed elsewhere.

M'Umbha danced out of the way when Uhura plated their meals, piling the rice high and topping it with the steaming red snapper and curried sauce. When she put them down on the table that was always set for company, her mother suddenly stepped closer and pulled her into a hug that was as surprising in its swiftness as it was in its ferocity.

"_Ninakupenda sana na sana tena_," she murmured, pressing her lips against Uhura's temple. "I love you forever and beyond, my Nyota. I know what's brought you home and it fills me with a terrible sadness, but I am willing to share yours whenever you're ready."

The blues in her voice softened into a dusty purple, so close to the same shade as Grandmother's, and Uhura fought against the sudden rise of tears that clogged her throat. Her first instinct was to brush it off, to deflect her mother's offer with some light-hearted joke — no matter how forced. But M'Umbha kissed her again, and smoothed a hand down her hair as she had done so many times, for so many years, for as far back as Uhura could remember. It was the same touch that soothed her the night Grandmother died, and brought her out of sleep to tell her that her father's ship had broken up in the atmosphere of some planet at the farthest reaches of space, then held her until she fell into slumber again.

And Uhura let go of the pain and anger that clenched tight around her heart.

She let that day flow out of her, let it sweep her away to the unthinkable images that flashed across the viewscreen and burned themselves into her brain as Vulcan burned, and withered, and disappeared. How Spock had lost himself, and when she thought him lost to all of them in turn. She told how her heart had stopped, and kicked to life again with a painful thump when she heard the whoops of triumph from the transporter room, from the bridge and decks all over the ship, showers of gold and silver and emerald sparks from every directon.

She talked until the tears took over, and then she cried until her eyes felt raw and swollen.

And when that was done — when her voice was as thin and dry and colorless as the road snaking through the moonlight outside — she wiped the tears from her face as her mother did the same. And together they went through the garden and down to the beach, where they sat and watched the stars rise from the sea.

\---

At the start of their second year on the _Enterprise_, Uhura sat at her customary station on the bridge and let her fingers fly across the communications board. While Captain Barrett continued his interminable speech to the ship's crew, she listened with less than half her attention. The rest was devoted to making sure everything was running smoothly during the transition. She kept routing status updates between the department heads and monitoring the usual background chatter that streamed through subspace for anything out of the ordinary. Just because Barrett wanted everyone to stop in their tracks, that didn't mean anyone was about to do it. A starship was advanced enough to run itself but anyone who'd been out on tour for longer than a few weeks knew you never relied on that automation unless you had a death wish.

"As such," Barrett said, the muddy brown timbre of his voice showing no signs of fatigue, even after nearly five solid minutes of extolling his own virtues. "As such, I will brook none of these amateur theatrics that some of your previous commanders have been so fond of fostering among the crew."

Just on the edge of her vision, she saw the almost synchronized eyeroll that swept across nearly the entire alpha shift.

"I foresee a long and, if you will all cooperate as is your _duty_, fruitful mission ahead of us," Barrett went on. "Pending the outcome of Captain Kirk's disciplinary hearing at Starfleet Command, of course. Captain Barrett out."

Instead of punching the comm closed again, he swiveled his chair around to face Uhura and jerked his thumb toward his shoulder.

With the sticky-sweet _yes, sir_ she'd perfected as a cadet 4th class still feeling completely out of her depth, she disconnected the ship-wide tannoy. Barrett swung around again and started barking orders at Chekov, who fumbled with his control board as he tried to catch up. Uhura winced and muttered a choice expletive when he brushed the manual thruster control by accident and rocked the ship off its gravitational anchors, to the captain's obvious displeasure. It took another agonizing few minutes before he got his bearings again and Sulu was able to bring the ship out of dock without incident.

As they headed for open space, Uhura sent revised instructions down to her staff deep in the bowels of the ship. She started an additional subspace scan to run while she reviewed the latest analyses that had been sent up. The dampening field from her Feinberg reciever blocked most of the noise from the bridge but she was aware of every move Barrett made as he paced from one duty station to the next to peer over shoulders and poke fingers at display readouts.

By the start of beta shift on the fourth day, the tension on the bridge practically crackled through the air. Uhura rolled her shoulders, trying to dispel some of the stiffness that had set in not long after the captain had strolled over to order her to record his log for the day.

A few weeks with him in command — and oh how she hoped it would only be a few weeks — and her rusty Klingon oaths would be ready for the seediest bar she could find. On either side of the border.

At mess that night, McCoy snorted at her over his steaming bowl of gumbo. "His bark's worse than his bite. Don't let him get your back up. Everything'll be situation normal in a couple of weeks."

It was Uhura's turn to snort, and not nearly as delicately as McCoy had. Kirk hadn't run afoul of someone else's morality this time. The charges he was defending himself against were serious enough to warrant his removal from the ship, instead of the ship putting in at the nearest Federation outpost for his court martial. "Something tells me he won't get off lightly this time," she said. "Not with Archer heading up the tribunal."

"Honey, they won't get anything to stick. With Areel coming all the way in from Starbase 11 to be his defense counsel, they don't stand a chance no matter how many living legends they got lined up against him. That woman's never met a fight she didn't wrestle right down to the ground."

She was about to keep the argument going, not out of any desire to prove him wrong but because she always enjoyed the way his drawl thickened as he got more agitated and the crease between his eyebrows deepened. When they were still at the Academy, she'd gloried in goading him into calling her a yellow-bellied sapsucker, and more: first in the middle of a crowded lecture, then again in the atrium of the library, and in a dozen other places, each more incongruous than the last, and none able to shame him into silence once she started to dig.

Before she could marshal a good enough gambit, the red alert klaxon roared to life. All around them, ensigns and enlisted crew jumped to their feet, abandoning their meals and hurrying for the exits. Uhura wiped her mouth and folded the napkin next to her plate. McCoy grinned and helped himself to another spoonful of gumbo.

"What is it this time, you think?"

Uhura closed her eyes and hummed, tapping a finger against her lips. "I think... Trying to show Science how to calibrate a sensor and keyed in the wrong sequence."

She looked across the table and quirked a brow.

"I don't know," he drawled, looking thoughtful. "You really think he's going to do the same thing twice?"

"Excellent point!" she shouted into the suddenly calm room as the klaxon cut out as abruptly as it had begun. With a grimace, she tapped the communicator panel set in the center of the table.

"Lieutenant Uhura to bridge," she called. "Parker, what's going on?"

Parker's voice, normally a crisp, grassy green, glowed a bright pink with barely suppressed laughter. "The captain was attempting to send a subspace communiqué to Starfleet Command without clearing it through comms, sir. Again. Security's with him in his quarters and have already reversed the alert. I was just about to send the all-clear."

McCoy saluted her with his drink. "See? Told you it would be something new."

\---

The next three weeks were some of the longest of Uhura's life. She couldn't understand why anyone would give Captain Barrett command of a tugboat, let alone the Starfleet flagship — no matter how shallow the available officer pool. Every shift was rife with bungled missions and projects. Away teams were sent down to hostile planets with an inadequate brief and a commander who retreated at the first sign of trouble. Four shifts worth of sensor logs and analyses went missing; not a trace remained in the computer banks, not even recoverable by Spock's best efforts.

Just the man's muddy, dull voice was enough to set Uhura on edge. It never wavered, never changed in pitch or tone, just the same plodding, slow cadence and unvarying blandness.

"It may seem as though we are being deliberately sabotaged," Spock said, "but I have discerned no such pattern to the events thus far. I find your data intriguing but nothing more. What we have here is likely nothing more than the law of large numbers in practice."

He was standing in the middle of her quarters, back straight like a pike and hands held loosely at his sides as he looked at each of them in turn. His voice was as hot and bright as she had ever heard it: red like a setting sun, and so vibrant it made her heart ache to hear it. He was more tightly controlled than ever before, his emotions on as short a leash as he could manage.

"I would advise you to let this matter drop before someone else gets wind of it." His voice darkened just for a moment as his control slipped before he nodded and turned to sweep out the door.

McCoy waited until the door slid shut behind him before he snarled and started pacing the floor again. "That goddamn green-blood—"

Uhura cleared her throat. It wasn't the first time he'd tried to use such ugly speciesist language in her presence and she knew it wouldn't be the last, but she had long ago made the decision not to let his behavior slide.

"Sorry," he ground out, his voice anything but; it was almost entirely orange-red with frustration and anger. "That goddamn _idiot_ can't see what's right in front of him! None of these problems were happening before Barrett came on board, and I can guaran-damn-tee you that they won't stick around after he's gone."

She waited while he kept pacing, running through everything they had witnessed and uncovered in the last few days, as though she hadn't been the one to notice something was wrong in the first place. His anger would burn itself out quickly — as it always did — and then they would be able to get down to figuring out what to do next now that they'd revealed themselves to Spock, and been dismissed. Gathering together the data cards they'd been feeding into the reader for Spock to examine, she started humming an old lullaby under her breath.

Waiting until he managed to get his already legendary short-fuse under control was all well and good, but she didn't have to wait all night for him to get around to it.

McCoy stopped abruptly in the middle of the room and spun to face her. He pointed an accusing finger at the door. "Does he know how you hear?"

"I assume he's familiar with the mechanics of human hearing, yes."

"You know what I mean," he blustered. "The synesthesia. He know about that?"

Uhura lifted her chin and returned his stare. "As my advisor he was aware that I have an advantage in deciphering communications but he has never asked for the details."

Standing loose-limbed with his mouth hanging open was not an attractive look on him. "You mean you never told him, don't you?"

"It was none of his business. It had no bearing on my performance at the Academy, and no relevance to our personal relationship."

"For pity's sake, Uhura, it's not like it's something you need to keep secret. You process sound differently than most people; what's the big deal? This isn't the twentieth century, for God's sake!"

She sighed. This was another of their long-running arguments; he refused to understand that there was any opinion but his own on the matter. In normal circumstances, she felt compelled to keep trying to sway him to see reason: _her_ reason. But it wouldn't do any good tonight. He was just blowing off the frustration of running into another solid wall where they thought they'd found a door.

When she didn't say anything further, he pushed a hand through his hair and breathed heavily through his nose. "All right," he said finally. "What do we do next?"

Uhura shrugged. "What we've been doing. We'll have to keep a closer eye on him though, now that we know we don't have enough to convince anyone. Sooner or later, though, Barrett's going to tip his hand, and then we'll have him."

\---

From where he was hanging face-down from the ceiling of the corridor, McCoy heaved a loud, obnoxious sigh.

"So do we have him _now_?"

"Stop talking," she chided. "You're distracting me."

"Oh, am I? So sorry. Maybe next time _you_ can try hanging from your ankles until it feels like your _legs_ are going to come out through your _eyeballs_."

Uhura wrinkled her nose and pretended to consider it for a moment. "Nah. These skirts have a tendency not to stay where you put them."

She moved to the left and started working on the last remaining cord of the rubbery substance that held him to the ceiling. The acidic slime coating it burned her fingers, but they were already so traumatized she hardly felt it.

"Just another second and you're fr—"

McCoy hit the floor with a loud thud and a heartfelt groan. He turned his head far enough to glare with the eye that wasn't mashed against the floor. "I'm gonna get you back for that, I swear."

"Promises, promises," she sing-songed.

She held out a hand to help him up, then turned her attention to the door controls. Her circuitry expertise was mostly concentrated on the communications equipment she used every day, but she thought she'd retained enough of her training classes to be able to get them out of their temporary prison. McCoy hovered over her shoulder while she worked, offering suggestions that would reverse what little progress she'd made had she taken him up on them.

"Why don't you tell me again what happened?" she suggested, loudly, not bothering to hide the irritation in her voice. "You went to give him the hypo, and then...?"

She'd often wondered what her own voice sounded like to other people and how they were able to pick up on her changing meanings without the same color cues that she heard.

Luckily, McCoy had never had that problem. She could practically hear his eyes roll back in his head before he started talking, his voice moving farther toward his usual cool tones the longer he went on.

"He knew I was coming, somehow. I don't know. Maybe he smelled me. When I got to his quarters he had already shifted form — which reminds me, Rand had better not let anyone in there to clean up. I want Jim to have that pleasure after getting us all in this mess in the first place."

He warmed to the topic quickly, going on in great detail about all the ways he was going to make Kirk pay for not being able to go more than three months without shooting his mouth off and causing intergalactic incidents. Uhura willed her fingers to go faster as she kept shifting circuits around to try for the right combination that would bypass the lock on the doors. Just as McCoy started in on a particularly unlikely scenario, there was a soft hiss from inside the wall behind the panel she had open, and then the doors snapped open.

"Thank _God_," McCoy exclaimed and picked up his medpack. Slinging it over his shoulder, he held the broken flap closed with one hand.

He stepped out of Uhura's range of vision as she replaced the panel cover. The next thing she knew, she was sliding through the open doors on her stomach, injured fingers scrabbling for purchase on the slick floor. She craned her head around far enough to see the long, dark tentacle wrapped around her boot.

"You have got to be kidding me," McCoy muttered from somewhere to her right.

There was a brief stinging pressure high up on her leg, like a poorly charged hypo against her flesh. In the next instant, the pressure at her ankle disappeared. Kicking hard in case the tentacle was just regrouping for better purchase, Uhura scrambled back the way she'd come, pushing herself to her feet so that she staggered back against the wall for what little protection that gave her. McCoy was right there with her, the medpack still swinging from one fist.

She looked past him to where one of the thick tentacles was still reeling, presumably from the blow he'd dealt.

"Can you walk?" he asked, stepping toward her and nearly taking a knee himself as one of his ankles gave out under him.

"Can you?" she shot back. She lifted his arm over her shoulders and propped him upright again. After a few seconds to acclimate herself to the added weight and change in her center of gravity, she started to walk them carefully down the shorter end of the corridor. Her goal was the lab at the end of the hallway, with a full comm unit and a locked weapons cabinet that she could access with her security codes.

McCoy hissed out another pain-filled breath with every step. Uhura chose their path with deliberate care, keeping as many of the creatures in view as possible as they moved forward. The creature that had pulled her out into the corridor had gotten lucky — they seemed to only be able to move swiftly when their prey's attention was directed elsewhere. As long as they stayed alert, they should be able to navigate the corridor safely.

The bite on her thigh throbbed in time with her heartbeat, sending bolts of pain ricocheting through her body. She was so distracted by it that she almost didn't see the tentacle in time. She had to do a quick sidestep to dodge the greedy, grasping vine-like appendage that undulated toward them. The garish purple flesh of the tentacle's mouth glistened in the muted light, rows and rows of sharp yellowed teeth snapping fruitlessly as they passed, with just a whisper of that muddy brown voice she'd first heard from the one who had disguised himself as Barrett.

McCoy hissed again as the ragged edges of his shirtsleeve brushed against one of the blood-black pustules on the closest creature's trunk, bringing forth an ooze of the same blistering secretion that had already raised welts on much of their exposed skin.

"God _damn_ it." His voice was low and dark, the pain and frustration coloring it like the swollen rainclouds that raced along in the wake of the monsoon.

Uhura tightened her grip on his wrist. "I'm doing the best I can, Doctor, but there's a reason I don't take the helm often."

"You don't take the helm often because Captain Barrett never met a duty rotation he didn't fuck up."

The dull, rusty orange of his frustration was so familiar that Uhura had to smile.

Once they made it out of the knot of creatures clustered around the room where they'd been trapped, it was much easier going. Uhura urged them faster as they neared the intersection where another corridor crossed the one they were in, the door to their goal on the far side. The doors whooshed open as they neared, and a figure rushed out at them, shouting something.

Uhura recognized the dark blood-red voice and dropped to the floor like a stone, pulling McCoy down with her before she realized that she was even moving.

Spock leapt over them, a phaser held aloft. He quickly brought it to bear on the tentacles that were snaking swiftly toward them from every direction — as soon as they had turned their backs, the creatures had started moving faster and faster. There were a few brief, quiet discharges from the phaser, and then it was all over.

Chapel and Dr M'benga materialized as if out of thin air and whisked them off to sickbay, ignoring McCoy's protests every step of the way. Once they arrived, another nurse led Uhura to an exam bed while Chapel distracted McCoy long enough for M'benga to sedate him.

In less than an hour, Uhura's wounds were bandaged and well on their way to healing, and McCoy was just stirring enough to make everyone wince in anticipation of the bellowing he was likely to do once he gained consciousness.

When Spock arrived to check on them after supervising the creatures' move to a secured cell in the cargo bay, McCoy had fought his way off of his exam bed and was hobbling around in his office, shouting and generally making a complete nuisance of himself.

Spock lowered his head toward Uhura in his usual greeting, his hands clasped behind his back. Whatever agitation he'd displayed in the corridor, there was none of it on display now. His voice was as bright red and well modulated as had become customary for him.

Uhura waited for the familiar dismay to flood into her chest, and was surprised to recognize a lightness instead, like a weight had been lifted long ago that she had only just noticed.

"I trust you'll make a full recovery?"

Uhura smiled, a happy one for a change instead of the usual awkward ones she directed at him. "Christine said I'll be dancing by the end of the week."

"That is... I am pleased to hear it," he said.

"Get your damned hands off me, devil woman!" McCoy shouted from within his office. "I'll bust you back to scrub nurse, just you watch me!"

"Perhaps I will come back later to take your statements," Spock said, a hint of a smile lifting one side of his mouth. "I should also apologize to both of you for not heeding your warnings."

She reached out to squeeze his hand briefly, surprised when she felt flesh and bone and nothing else: no rush of emotion, or its lack, just his hand under hers.

"I think you just did."


End file.
